


Underwater (It Weighs You Down)

by forestdivinity (ForestDivinity)



Series: One Shots [10]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Anxiety, Character Study, Depression, Gen, I'm Bad At Tagging, Introspection, Medication, Pre-Canon, Vanya Hargreeves Deserves Better, Vanya Hargreeves Needs A Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-23
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-14 04:01:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29661441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ForestDivinity/pseuds/forestdivinity
Summary: A little oneshot exploring some of Vanya's feelings - or lack of them - while she's on her pills.
Series: One Shots [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/535576
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17





	Underwater (It Weighs You Down)

  
Vanya takes her pills. Her antidepressants. Her mood stabilisers. The ones that say they’ll make her anxiety go away. She has good days, and she has wonderful days, fair days, okay days. Bad days. Absolutely terrible days when she curls up in bed and misses her siblings like there’s a hole in the bottom of her heart. Awful days when she’s so angry, it should hurt, so lonely it tears her apart. There’s no reason she should be feeling like that, anxious, angry, upset.

What are the pills for if she still feels every emotion? 

They just disconnect her from her body, a nice even split down the seams. The emotions are still there, inside of her, raging away like a storm. In the end, the conclusion she comes to is always the same: she’s the one missing.

* * *

Vanya always wakes up the same way, to the ringing of her alarm clock. It’s an old fashioned thing, all mechanical with a steady ticking and a shrill bell that always echoes across the room. She always wakes up with a start — all at once, that is. One minute she’s asleep, and the next minute she’s staring at the ceiling, her heart racing like she’s run a marathon. Maybe she’d been at the bottom of a pool, and this is simply her breaking for air. It would be apt if she didn’t always feel like she was underwater. 

Most days, she lies there, staring at the ceiling of her apartment. She’s had the same one for almost a decade now, knows the white paint well - she’d never gotten around to customising much. Who paints a ceiling anyway? There comes the water again, lapping back around her in its familiar embrace; the dizziness and the fadeaway threaten the corners of her vision. 

Most days, she lies there and wants to go back to the pool, but she doesn’t. 

Instead, she gets up. This part of the routine is familiar too, the putting of feet onto cold floors, the sudden shivers up her spine. Part of it is the morning chill; more of it is her own heart beating in her chest. Like a drum, it goes on, grows a little louder with every step she takes until it echoes around the room. Vanya knows anxiety, the way it twists and grows in her gut. One step, two-step, she walks forwards. 

Seven steps usually take her to her bathroom. Sometimes she drags it out until the feeling is almost unbearable but today is most days, simple - routine. She makes it to the bathroom counter. In the mirror, her reflection swims, and suddenly she’s back at the bottom of the pool. It leaves her palms damp, sweaty. By the time she pours out the pills, every little round one of them, the back of her neck feels wet too. 

The floor isn’t cold under her feet any longer. Depression tastes like medicine, she’d long since decided. Medicine and mint, the overly fresh taste of toothpaste dotted out onto a brush—bitter, clean. Slowly, the pool recedes - maybe it was never a pool at all; instead, a vast, salty ocean with its own type of tide. When she looks up again in the mirror, she sees her reflection. It’s static now, the same brown hair, pale skin she always sees. Pupils perfectly sized. Normal.

Inside of her, she imagines a piggy bank rattling around. A glass mason jar filled with little pills. If she looks close enough, stares into the mirror, she can see them, rolling white around the centre of her eyes. It makes her mouth dry up, something sickly in the back of her throat. Minty. Salty. As medicated as chlorine. 

Vanya takes her pills. She has good days, bad days, but mostly she has days at the bottom of a dark pool, longing to swim up again, find the edges of her body and really sit in it. Every day she swims, and every day, she gets nowhere, good or bad as they may be.

Every day her emotions get a little bit further away.

Vanya takes her pills.

**Author's Note:**

> Please comment and Kudos if you like!! You can follow me on [@forestdivinity](https://forestdivinity.tumblr.com/) for more content!
> 
> Special thanks to [Elliot's House discord](https://discord.gg/dGg2Tb) for all your support!


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